Of pigs and time- keeping in Africa

EDITOR—I deeply appreciate Julius Babyetsiza’s letter entitled, “Africans will pay for abuse of time”, published on Monday. But in defence of Africans outside Uganda, may I say I have been favourably impressed by the way leaders in southern Africa keep time. Robert Mugabe, for example, as chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe regularly comes 15 minutes before graduation commences.

At exactly 9:00am his procession will be marching to the Great Hall of the People. The parliament of Zimbabwe also opens on the dot. However, here in Gulu, I am discouraged from attending Sunday service at St Phillips because the 10:00am service can delay from half an hour to a full hour! The sermon of the day may take up to an hour instead of 15 minutes. This reminds me of a joke I once heard. Farmers from Gulu went to study pig rearing in Mukono and found Mukasa feeding the pigs on whole raw potatoes.

Beside himself Okello commented: “Mr Mukasa, if you could chop the potatoes into bits and cook them, it would take the pigs a shorter time to digest.” Mukasa replied: “What’s time to a pig?” So, do we also have no sense of time just like pigs?

Name withheld